


Square Peg

by NSAS_Jian



Series: Discontinuum [2]
Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie, The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: All tags from previous work apply, Gen, I'll add others as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:00:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29028348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NSAS_Jian/pseuds/NSAS_Jian
Summary: Supplementary content to 'Dysfunct Interim'. Right now it's mostly going to be POV pieces from characters other than Murderbot, and likely won't make sense if you haven't read 'Dysfunct Interim'. All chapters are posted chronologically in relation to the main narrative. Going to go ahead and admit that I won't be beta-ing these chapters as thoroughly, so feel free to point out any mistakes in the comments and I'll fix them :)
Series: Discontinuum [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2129559
Comments: 15
Kudos: 19





	1. Collision State

The tea I had spilled as  _ Mercy of Kalr _ moved into gate space was starting to soak into my trousers and through the seams of my boots. It was unpleasant, but my focus wasn’t on that or the shattered remains of the bowl an Etrepa was already hurriedly scooping up.

“They gated,” I said. “Almost as soon as they saw us.” The message we’d sent to  _ Sword of Atagaris _ had been a waste, then. “They saw us, and thirty seconds later, they moved.” It was suspicious- moreover, it was probably a move taken with hostile intent. We were ‘only’ a Mercy after all, and if a Mianaai other than the one from Omaugh Palace had already been in Athoek System before I arrived then they might have some idea of what brought us here. Or perhaps there was something else going on- something local. The latter was more likely, seeing as no information from Omaugh System could have made it to Athoeki faster than we had, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Even though I was still off-kilter from my attempt to move Ship without actually being  _ Mercy of Kalr _ , I requested the information that would show me my crew. The bowl shattering had woken Tisarwat and her Bos, an Amaat had fallen and sprained her wrist, and several dishes including mine and Lieutenant Ekalu's had shattered. There were no other casualties though, we’d been prepared for trouble when we gated in and secured everything beforehand.

I heard Ekalu come to the same conclusion about  _ Sword of Atagaris _ that I had several seconds earlier and felt her alarm and puzzlement through my connection with  _ Mercy of Kalr _ , but I didn't have much time to try and reassure her. Not that there were many reassuring things I could say.

“Take hold,” said Ship, in all of our ears, and I watched Ekalu’s adrenaline spike sharply and her knuckles go pale from her grip on the handhold.

“Sir,” I could hear the carefully repressed apprehension in her voice, “How do we know where  _ Sword of Atagaris _ is when we come out?”

“We don’t Lieutenant.” Then, because I knew that didn’t help calm her, added, “We probably won’t hit  _ Sword of Atagaris _ , space is big. And this morning's cast was fortunate.” She had enough time to be skeptical in my direction before we were back in the universe. Sun, stars, planet, station, but no  _ Sword of Atagaris _ .

“Where is it?” Asked Lieutenant Ekalu. “And what… what is  _ that _ ?”

_ Mercy of Kalr _ had already given me its calculations, so I knew that  _ Sword of Atagaris _ was still ten seconds from reappearing and didn’t need the answer it whispered into Ekalu’s ear. “Nobody let go of anything,” I cautioned, before finally focusing on the little anomaly that was beginning to distress Ekalu.

There was a small, clunky cargo-hauler sitting several hundred kilometers away. It didn’t look Radchaai or Athoeki, and  _ Mercy of Kalr _ was already telling me that its engines were offline, but life support was active. A crewed ship then, from a non-Radch ( _ ‘uncivilized’ _ ) system. Half a second later, we received its distress beacon and Ship showed it to the Lieutenants on the bridge with me. 

“Engine failure…” Ekalu’s voice would’ve betrayed her concern even if I hadn’t had access to Ship’s readings. “That is a bad place to be stuck in. Sir, should-” 

Then, right on schedule, a blacker-than-black hole opened up, blocking out the expanse of stars, and  _ Sword of Atagaris _ appeared. 

Where the hauler had been, there was a small, quiet flashbulb of an explosion as it was crushed against Sword of Atagaris’s hull, then pushed away, trailing shrapnel, cargo crates, and a puff of dissipating atmosphere from the explosive breach in its hull where its troubled engine  _ used _ to be. 

“The debris will not breach our shield.”  _ Mercy of Kalr _ said in all our ears, but the horrified distress radiating off the officers present was not lessened in any significant way, and in fact, only worsened when we received the transmission  _ Sword of Atagaris _ was sending. 

“Unknown ship,” said the voice, authoritative and firm. As if she hadn’t just accidentally destroyed over a civilian ship. And she had to have known about it, too.  _ Sword of Atagaris _ would have sensed the explosion even if it didn't do any damage to the hull. “Identify yourself or be destroyed.”

“Captain,” said Ship, then showed me a view of the cargo hauler from its hull. Silhouetted against the starlight and the hull of the Sword before us, was a body. It had floated out of the ship along with the other detritus and seemed intact, for the most part.

“Tell Seivarden to prepare herself and her Amaats for a retrieval immediately,” I said to Ship. We had a minute and a half to save the figure while she could still breathe and slightly more time after that to attempt resuscitation. I had to deal with  _ Sword of Atagaris _ , but the citizens on that ship who were still intact couldn't wait for that.

  
“Sword of Atagaris,” I said, knowing that Ship could contact Seivarden and transmit my words at the same time. “This is Fleet Captain Breq Mianaai, commanding  _ Mercy of Kalr _ . Explain yourself.”


	2. Most Likely

“Ship, please tell Lieutenant Seivarden to take her Amaats and leave me alone with my patient.”

I wasn’t privy to whatever reaction Seivarden had to that in the same way  _ Mercy of Kalr _ was but I could still see her fingers gesturing empathetically as she turned and started walking back down the hallway, Amaats following her in their usual formation. I didn’t watch as they left, keeping an eye on my new patient instead.

She was… Interesting. I had seen a great many peculiar things since Captain Val was discharged from Mercy of Kalr but  _ this _ … It was hard for me to tell if she had, at any point in her life, been entirely human. I didn’t even know what to  _ start _ with and I covered my hesitation by taking off the evacsuit, making sure each motion I made was slow, clear enough to be read from where my patient was standing. I saved the helmet for last, it would hide my gawking while I let my medical implants give me some idea of what I was working with.

There were…  _ things  _ in her head that reminded me of the time I had spent re-activating the Fleet Captains ancillary implants and removing the ones that had been forced upon our baby Lieutenant, but looked  _ completely  _ different. (They caused a similar shudder of revulsion though.) Her torso was a confusion of things that might have been organs and things that obviously weren’t. I was relieved and slightly disgusted to find a pair of lungs where I expected them to be, encased safely within her not-quite-right ribcage, but they were strange: small, almost withered, and didn’t move quite the way I expected them to when she breathed (and her breathing was steady, calm, as if we hadn’t just retrieved her from the vacuum of space). 

“What  _ is  _ she?” I asked Ship, just a little helplessly, and got exactly the answer I was expecting.

_ I’m afraid I don’t know, Medic, but I suggest keeping an eye on her forearms. She has energy weapons where her radii should be. _

I had seen that just as  _ Mercy of Kalr _ pointed them out, moving my gaze away from her abdomen after finding nothing else I recognized. Her skeleton had seemed mostly the same as any other, reinforced in several places but that wasn’t as uncommon a modification as the  _ guns in her arms _ were. Completely overt firearms! I could even see the outer port and the barrels nestled inside her forearms.

I took the helmet off and tucked it under my arm, busying myself with unlatching the boots of this Amaats-cursed thing so that I could pretend I hadn't been staring. My patient had no such compunctions and I could feel her gaze on my face, then caught the motion in my periphery as she abruptly jerked her head up and away.

_ She's just looking down the hall. _ __

_ Mercy of Kalr's _ assurance was justified, as her sudden movement had exasperated my already considerable anxiety. I acknowledged with a flick of my wrist and bent down to unzip the outer pocket that contained my medical supplies, holding it up as I stood again.

"This is my medical kit," I told her, and as I had expected she immediately looked over to scrutinize it. "I am going to come over and have a look at your legs, it will be easier if you can sit on the gurney." She hesitated a moment, then nodded. I kept my pace carefully even and predictable as I approached. The schematics and readings my scans were giving me of her implants only came into more detail as I got closer and I had to hide a shudder of revulsion. Who would  _ do _ this? Had she submitted to that willingly?  _ Why? _

“Ship… Have you seen  _ anything  _ like this?”

_ I have not. It is most likely a design originating from outside of Radch space.  _

"Then how am I supposed to know how to fix it?" I asked Ship, then to my patient I said, "Are you having any trouble breathing? Any light-headedness—?"  _ Or Nausea _ was supposed to be the next question, but I had seen that she didn't appear to have a digestive system, instead, her abdomen was packed with a haphazard arrangement of devices I could only hope weren't bombs. I was inclined to trust Ship had already scanned for that, but I had seen too many strange things on this trip alone.

My patient shook her head, still staring blankly over my left shoulder, and I steeled myself as I took a step closer. When she didn't react beyond adjusting her gaze to keep me in sight I continued, managing to get as close as I needed to and sit down on the floor in front of her legs without her… engaging her arm-guns.

_ You can activate your armor before she can activate her weapons. _ Ship said, and I  _ knew _ it was just trying to make me feel better, but it did work just a little bit.

"Which leg?" I asked.

"Both." she sounded hoarse and slightly strained, but that was expected. The odd thing was that she didn't seem to be in any pain at all… although that was likely for the best.

"I'm going to start on this side and cut your pants away." No response, so with the small knife in my kit I gingerly cut the fabric and let it fall, revealing her knee and calf. 

What I saw wasn't promising. Almost the entire lower half of her leg was inorganic- I'd known that there was a lot of augmentation in her legs but I'd hoped for something just a little bit more…  _ human _ to work with on the surface. No such luck.

"What do I do? I'm not a mechanic and I can't even see what the problem is." I said to Ship, peering around her leg. It was obviously dented in some places, and I could see a few shards of what might've been shrapnel lodged in the workings of the… prosthetic? It could have been, but it wasn't a model I had ever worked with.

_ I'll guide you. The design is unfamiliar but the mechanisms will most likely have the same function as the models in my archives.  _

_ " _ Most likely." I echoed doubtfully, and pulled out a pair of long tweezers, carefully tugging at one of the possible-shrapnel bits. It came loose without any sort of force, so I deemed it safe enough to remove and drop in the case I had set aside. 

I spoke as I worked, an old habit from my field training. It was supposed to be reassuring to my patients, but I couldn’t help but feel as though she could tell exactly how uncertain I was, like she knew that I was only paying a little bit of attention to what came out of my mouth. 

_ Move behind her to look into the back of the knee. _ Ship instructed, and after dropping the next piece of shrapnel I did so, clicking the tweezers’ light on to look at the inner workings of her knee. I couldn't make much sense of it, beyond noting that there was some amount of fluid coating the inside that made it even harder to see into.

_ "Something must have ruptured," _ I noted, and Ship agreed, almost certainly looking through my eyes at the situation presented to us. After another moment, it began to instruct me on how to proceed in a way that would  _ most likely _ do more good than harm. The first order of business had been to find the source of the fluid, and I was relieved to find that everything that had been ruptured or cut was able to seal automatically. At least my patient wasn’t bleeding out, if the fluid staining my hands was indeed a type of blood. (I was trying not to think too hard about what else it could be).

I’d managed to remove a good amount of the coagulated fluid and shrapnel from her joint in time for Ship to inform me that two Amaats were just down the hall with a gurney in tow. I would have better lighting and more tools in the Medbay, but I still had no better Idea about how to approach… this. I would have to ask my patient directly and hope she was able to provide enough information for me to work with. 

“Ok,” I sighed, relieved to have a course of action, and stood up faster than I had meant to. My patient went suddenly stiff all over and I cursed myself. A stupid mistake. Nonetheless, I continued as though I hadn’t noticed. “Is that better?”

“Yes.”

“Good, The gurney is here.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Medic... She just wants to do her damn job but nothing normal every happens on Mercy of Kalr

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in my first and second draft but scrapped it in my final as I decided not to include other POVs in the main narrative... and it stuck really closely to the passage from Imperial Radch I was ripping from and I didn't feel comfortable posting it. HOWEVER... It helped me greatly in getting into the flow of the story and for that it deserves acknowledgment :)


End file.
